Page 42 - Speedhorse July 2018

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SPEEDLINES
1972 Champion 2-Year-Old Filly Byou Bird (shown here between Mrs. Tien Merrick with silver trophy and Walter Merrick after winning the 1972 Kansas
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Byou Bird produced two foals, including 1978 Raton Futurity winner
I Get By, who is double bred to Lena’s Bar with a 2x3 breeding pattern.
The race that put Lena’s Bar on the map was the 1959 Miller Hotel Allowance at Ruidoso Downs. She entered this race against four Champions, defeating 3-time World Champion Go Man Go, World Champion Vandy’s Flash, Champion Double Bid and Champion Vanetta Dee. Easter Rose, a Merrick bred runner, was also in the field and she was an AQHA Racing Honor Roll winner.
Merrick retired Lena’s Bar from the track in 1961 and she produced five foals before her untimely death from complications of a bladder infection. The first foal she produced was Double Dancer by Double Bid. Double Dancer ran AAA time and earned his ROM, with eight starts, one win and one second.
Double Dancer went on to sire 21
racing ROM and the earners of $98,225. His progeny includes five stakes winners in 1981 Nebraska Futurity winner Double Your Dough, 1977 Western Slope Futurity winner Tri Dancer, Narrow Gauge Downs Futurity winner Scotch Double, South Dakota Open Futurity winner Beauty Dancer and Park Jefferson Futurity winner Miss Double Lena.
The other individual I interviewed who made observations about Lena’s Bar was Hank Wiescamp, who was a well known breeder of horses such as AQHA Hall of Fame horse Skipper W. Wiescamp built his program around the famous foundation
sire Old Fred by linebreeding to this great stallion. He used speed bred stallions as key outcrosses for his linebreeding program. Double Dancer, the first foal out of Lena’s Bar, was one of those outcross stallions.
During the visit I had with Wiescamp,
he explained why he bought Double Dancer. “Double Dancer did a heck of a job for me,” he said. “No one else did anything with him. The reason I wanted Double Dancer was on account of his mother, Lena’s Bar. Lena’s Bar was the greatest breeding daughter of Three Bars. Wasn’t one close to her.” Wiescamp wanted to get the blood of Three Bars into his program and he believed that Lena’s Bar was the way to go.
Double Dancer sired one son that became a major player in Wiescamp’s program. His name was St Dancer, who had a 90 speed index on the track. When I visited with Wiescamp, St Dancer had seven sons in the breeding program, a sign of how successful he was as a sire.
One of the stallions Merrick stood was Tonto Bars Hank by Tonto Bars Gill by Three Bars. The mating of Tonto Bars Hank and Lena’s Bar resulted in Delta Rose. The filly was second in the 1967 La Mesa Park’s Kansas Futurity, the 1967 Golden Spread Derby,
the 1967 New Mexico Breeders’ Derby, and she was third in the 1967 Buttons And Bows Stakes. She earned $12,794 from 16 starts, with three wins, eight seconds and two thirds.
40 SPEEDHORSE, July 2018
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